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By Khaled A., on March 15th, 2010
This is interesting. I noticed a surge of spam comments on posts that mention online shopping services on the site whenever I mention a service like myus, myusabox, Aramex, etc. The latest surge were from a site named Viaddress. Here are a few screen shots from my control panel:
Same IP address, an Arabic name and even a link to an Arabic forum post about Viaddress (on ADSLgate, a well known Arabic forum). Where some “new” members joined the forum just to defend Viaddress.
I urge everyone to avoid Viaddress at all costs, hopefully these points will convince you:
- They hired spammers or spam bots to advertise their “service”.
- Viaddress facebook page have over 1600 members and no customer interaction at all. Wall posts have no comments but if you look at the links section you will notice a few comments saying that Viaddress is a fraud.
- Over 72 complaints about Viaddress on “Complaintsboard” and the comments on each one is vicious. Many are accusing Viaddress of hiring people.
- Another example on suspected “hiring” to “get a good word”.
- Viaddress twitter page is also empty, with many followers and no interaction with their followers. Found this tweet talking about Viaddress scam and this tweet about Viaddress hiring people to review them!
I simply won’t trust a company that hires spammers *edited my tone here*.
Continue reading Avoid Viaddress, they hire spammers (updated)
By Khaled A., on February 14th, 2010
Update: on Yousef’s shipment: finally in Jeddah, again. Wanna see something funny? Here’s the shipment mapped.
DHL EasyShop is another US forwarding services similar to MyUS. I didn’t get the chance to try it but if you’re interested read this first impressions post on 2:48am and this site dedicated to comment about how bad it really is.
With my many MyUS shipments I noticed that some shipments stay idle in DHL Bahrain for a long time (2 or more days some times). There was no reason for that delay, they simply chill out in Bahrain. I call it “the DHL black hole in Bahrain”.
I talked about it a lot on twitter, but what happened to me can’t be matched by what Yraffah experienced. He complained about it on twitter (here, here, here, here and here). Basically his shipment went from the US to Bahrain then went to his city Jeddah, stayed there for a week then shipped to Bahrain, stayed there for a few days, currently it is in Riyadh!
So here’s the theory: DHL is deliberately stalling shipments from MyUS to discourage MyUS customers and promoted their own EasyShop service. A historian friend suggested this theory and I agree with him.
Please remember that this is a Conspiracy theory with no evidence to prove it except user experiences.
By Essam, on August 16th, 2009
Let’s face it, imported products sold and distributed in Saudi Arabia are not necessarily on par price-wise with what you may find online, which is why most people have turned to shipping services such as Aramex, DHL’s Easy Shop, UPS’ World Ship, and many others currently entering the fray for their shopping (and shipping) needs. Among these newcomers is the US-based (but Saudi-operated) Shop Gates. Located in Akron, Ohio, Shop Gates utilizes UPS’ fast and efficient World Ship service to delivers your purchased goods to the UPS branch nearest to your home.
Continue reading ShopGates mail forwarding service
By Orchidbuy, on August 1st, 2009
It’s all about the shopping. The easier it gets, the more we spend. Online shopping remains to be my favorite. And what makes it trouble-free is my best US mail forwarder My USA Box.
What I believe stands out of the services of My USA Box compared to other similar outlets, is the user friendly account page. This includes pictures of your items and their description, in which you can select to ship separately or together. Combining also saves you money and the valuable matter is that when you combine, it shows you how much you saved in each shipment!
And that’s not all, when you choose to be a ‘Premium’ member, you get a %60 discount on shipping, and those rates beat all services globally.
Continue reading Myusabox review, another mail forwarding service
By Khaled A., on July 29th, 2009
Did you try to buy from a site such as Newegg but you find out that they don’t accept your Saudi based credit card and refuse to ship to Aramex mailbox? Even though they used to work before.
I have talked about MyUS before. Now I will explain in detail one of their services “MyUS Personal Shopper“. Which is designed to “overcome several common obstacles encountered when shopping online in the US, and to provide our members with the convenience of a concierge-style shopping experience.”
Continue reading How to buy from websites using MyUS personal shopper
By Khaled A., on July 19th, 2009
We’ve all been there, you wanted that brand new MacBook Pro but the prices in Saudi Arabia compared to Amazon are exorbitant! So what should you do?
There are a lot of international package forwarding companies that can ship to Saudi Arabia. One of the most common services is Aramex’s Shop&Ship but they have increased their prices many times, from $5 per pound to $10.
It’s been a year since I switched to MyUS’s services. They offer full control of the mailbox; you can group the shipments the way you want it and ship them to Saudi Arabia whenever you want. You can provide special instructions on how to treat your shipments and you can also set a declared value of your choice for the customs.
They ship using DHL (and sometimes FedEx), the shipments take 3-4 days until they arrive and I had no issue with the Saudi customs unlike Aramex. The support is very responsive and once I received a damaged item and I had an immediate refund for that value.
Another advantage of MyUS is that they can buy for you. For example if you want to buy from Newegg ( a well known hardware store that doesn’t accept Aramex mailbox) you can make a request to MyUS and they will make the order for you. They will take a small percentage as processing fee but it is better than not being able to order.
I am very satisfied with MyUS services after a year and I will renew for a second year with them. No more crappy Aramex for me!
By Khaled A., on July 4th, 2009
SaudiMac has a price list of the new MacBook Pro models. But should you buy them from Saudi Arabia or just buy them online from Amazon.
Quick overview on your Apple choices in Saudi Arabia: stores “authorized” by Arab Computers stores and “independant” stores (itechia, ADAM, apparently Global Store and others). AC Macs appear to be European based on the power adapter while the others import from the United States.
The other choice as I said earlier is to buy from Amazon then ship using MyUS or similar services. You should assume paying for shipping as well as paying the Saudi Arabia custom fee (%5 if you are lucky, they once considered my 3rd gen iPod a computer!). You will need to add Arabic letters yourself and warranty is a bit sketchy.
Here are the prices for the MacBook Pro models from Apple compared to the Saudi Arabia prices, assuming a convert rate of $1 = 3.80SR. Remember that you need to add shipping and custom fees:
MacBook Pro 13-inch 2.26GHz: on Amazon: 4,405SR. Here: 5,649SR.
MacBook Pro 13-inch 2.53GHz: on Amazon: 5,677SR. Here: 6,899SR.
MacBook Pro 15-inch 2.53GHz: on Amazon: 6,480SR. Here: 8,399SR.
MacBook Pro 15-inch 2.66GHz: on Amazon: 7,480SR. Here: not available.
MacBook Pro 15-inch 2.80GHz: on Amazon: 9,268SR. Here: 10,199SR.
MacBook Pro 17-inch 2.80GHz: on Amazon: 9,344SR. Here: 11,299SR.
By Khaled A., on June 3rd, 2009
Tracking multiple shipments can be a pain. I usually use a Mac OS X Dashboard widget named Delivery Status. But I also found about an interesting method to track shipments using Twitter!
First of all you need a Twitter account. Follow @trackthis, it will auto follow you immediatly. While you are at it, follow us @sauditech to receive website updates. Then send a direct message to @trackthis in this format:
d trackthis 123456789123 New PC
Where the number is the UPS, Fedex, USPS, DHL, etc tracking number and the text after that is the label for that shipments. Now you will receive direct messages from @trackthis whenever there is a change in the delivery status. You can learn more about trackthis at their website. They also offer tracking using a Facebook application or though an e-mail message.
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